Leaders of The Free World
by triffickie
Summary: Snapshots of a relationship. NevillexLuna


**leaders of the free world**  
fandom: harry potter  
rating: pg-13  
pairing: neville/luna  
disclaimer: Rowling pwns.  
word count: 1,024  
notes: Prompt by sioniann. The italicized bits are song lyrics from the Elbow album that shares this fic's title. First segment - first song on the album - first line, second segment - second song, etc.

---

1.

_I haven't been myself of late._

I never am when I'm with her. I become someone else.

Such a simple concept, changing for someone, when with someone. You could say I become myself when I'm with her but that's not true. That's not me, the person she loves, that's someone else, that's someone I want to be for her.

For her eyes only, the perfect, perfect me for just for her.

I don't try to be anything different, it just happens. I slide into another form, I relax, I'm just.

Don't say "me" because that's not true. That's not true.

It's difficult.

2.

_In order to feel._

Luna has a problem with people. Certain people. Muggles would call it a problem. Wizards don't call a lot of things problem, they just let them stay the way they are, like hoping they'll fix themselves, which they never ever do. Luna has a problem like this.

Luna can't open up. Luna has layers. Luna hides. 

Luna tries. Everything for a person she loves. Thinks she loves. She can't help her problems. Neither can he. But they're pretty good together, Luna thinks. Wants to think.

Luna has trouble with people in general. It's difficult to show things.

In order to feel, and let them know.

3.

_The suns had enough and the simmering sky_ fills slowly with morning gray-slash-yellow as he wakes up next to her. As he always does. That's what sleeping together is like. Togetherness in the mornings, in the evenings, in the nights. They meet during the day, too. But Luna isn't really for that. Talking, exchanging questions, answers.

He touches her to wake her up and he's glad he knows how to do that. Otherwise, he sometimes feels, they'd have nothing left.

4.

_And you pull the plug._

Literally, as the electronic device has stopped working. You hate it. You hate these small things but you're yourself, you're faraway and you chatter, you always chatter like there's nothing but words to say and he listens, as he does, because to him there is nothing but your words, he takes them in, tries to find the point, the meaning, the words connecting into a fine sentence that would make him feel like he matters.

He does. But you're faraway and you chatter though you should just tell him you care.

They say he can't handle you, you're too much and he's too little. It's true.

5.

_Between pulling teeth_, because they fight, even when he does his everything to avoid it. She notices it, is very touched, is truly very touched and doesn't want to fight, argue, churn out hurtful words but it's okay, it's just how she is. She has problems. He doesn't mind them.

He calms her down eventually and he's never really upset because even though she knows what would really hurt (his parents his parents his parents) she never mentions it. 

He holds her. Whispering, "shhh" and she repeats it, like a mad person but he doesn't think she is one.

6.

_She brings the morning sun_, I breathe her in at the break of dawn and it's good. Sometimes things are.

Sometimes we don't need anything else. I kiss her shoulders and want to say things, lovely things I hear Ron whisper Hermione and vice versa when they think no one can hear but that's just not us. We're not like that. We're us, special and sacred and important.

Even when some mornings she says she doesn't want to wake up. And I say, "You don't mean that."

She smiles then. "I don't."

7.

_That he's better looking than me._ I think of things like these, reasons why we will come apart.

Split, shatter, break. I'm not sure why I do it. It keeps me thinking, this isn't perfect, this can't be that. It's not that I want it to happen. I don't.

But it could-slash-will happen. I like to think like an optimist but I believe like a pessimist.

If-slash-when it does happen, I'll miss him. I try not hold on too hard. I hear things slip past one's fingers then. Like sand. Everyone's heard that tale. I've heard it one too many times.

8.

_When all the songs are through_, we go home.

We call it home now, the small flat we used to called Neville's. We come back from the funerals, dressed in black, Muggle black sometimes wizard black, like there's a difference, there is, so we go with that.

We're together now. Our hands together, an invisible string tying them against each other. Palm to palm. Forearm to forearm.

We're old and our friends are dying. We listen to the mourning songs and go home. 

--

Neville wakes up from the dream, his mouth dry. Luna kisses him and tells him to get back to sleep and he wonders if she had the same dream.

If they'll become one. Eventually.

9.

_I'm from a long line of survivors._

She can't kill me. I can handle her. I'm enough for her. She's enough for me. I won't kill her.

I'm not too little and she's not too much.

They're all wrong.

10.

_Was our witness and priest_ the Earth that day?

Maybe. We went to visit his grandmother, she was dying he told me, and secretly, as we walked on the grass to the great building, we hoped she really was dying. He squeezed my hand and we hoped. Secretly, hoping no one would hear us hope such bad things.

She didn't die then but we came back from the house and there was green all over and he gave me a flower from the rose bushes.

"Do you like it here?" he asked me. I did.

"Then let's live here."

I could've let go of his hand but I didn't.

11.

_I leaned on you today._

You didn't break. I knew you wouldn't. I told you words I never had before. You took them in and returned them, inhaled them and then exhaled them with your own scent, your own sound.

It was as perfect as anything ever.


End file.
